British Architectural Books from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 1664-1799 A Collection of Seventy Titles Offered for Sale en bloc Charles Wood, Bookseller 2015-2016 1. The BUILDER’S DICTIONARY: or, gentleman and architect’s 1774.’ (BABW, p. 412). The present copy is in fine condition, with a few companion. London: A. Bettesworth & C. Hitch, 1734 contemporary ms corrections. NUC locates two copies (Baker Lib., Harvard; & Columbia). First edition. The only illustrated 18th century builder’s dictionary; it was 8vo, full early 20th cent. blue calf, marbled endpapers, with the leather bookplate of W. A. largely based on Neve’s earlier Dictionary; Chambers’s Cyclopedia, and other Foyle, Beeleigh Abbey. (iv)+iv+16+(ii)+17-28 pp. with 4 text illus. sources. According to Harris the preface is the most interesting and original piece in the Dictionary. The work also contains the only English translation of Gautier’s Traité des Ponts. Each volume bears the approbation of Nicholas 3. [DUBREUIL, JEAN]. The practice of perspective: or, an easy method Hawksmoor, John James, and James Gibbs. The frontispiece is a charming of representing natural objects according to the rules of art...written in French engraving of a gentleman and an architect conversing with a quotation from by a Jesuit of Paris; since translated into German by Ch. Rembold and into Pope (and illustrated in Harris, p. 129). Park List 4. UCBA, I, p. 418. Har- English by Rob. Pricke. And now, a second time, into the same language by E. ris, BABW, 65. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of this edition (O’Neal 15). Chambers. The third edition. London: Tho. Bowles, 1749 2 vols, 8vo, orig. calf, hinges of both volumes mended with flexible cement, new lettering pieces. Unpaginated. Engraved frontisp. and 34 engr. plates: Vol I, 1-15; vol II, 16-27, [*], Originally published Paris, 1642. This copy has extensive marginal annota- 28-33. Vol II is partially split. Bindings are not very attractive but internally a nice clean tions and contemporary diagrams drawn in pen & ink on the verso of the absolutely complete copy. first plate. They are taken from T. Bardwell, The Practice of Painting and Perspective, (1756). A long popular book, there were two English transla- tions, the first by Robert Pricke (1672; 1698), the second by the encyclopedist RARE PUBLICATION ON ARTIFICIAL SLATE Ephriam Chambers in 1726. “Quite probably the most influential book on FOR ROOFING perspective ever published expressly for the use of a lay audience sketchily raffed together with greater cunning than scruple from a number of acknowl- 2. [COOK, HENRY]. Patent artificial slate manufactory, Woodford edged sources, this book aroused the kind of public squabbles that insure Bridge, Essex, for covering roofs, fronts of houses, and ricks, also water pipes and wide publicity and instant success. Chief victims were Aleaume (never named) gutters. London, [ca. 1786] whose original plates were plundered before ever this book saw the light and Desargues. All the same, the book obviously filled a shrewdly-judged gap. Fine copy of a rare and interesting pamphlet/trade catalogue; the ESTC lo- As an easily understandable manual for non-professionals, it enjoyed consid- cates a single copy in the British Isles, at the British Library (lacking the title erably more than a succès de scandale.” - P. Breman in Wiebenson III-B-19. page and amendment leaf). The artificial slate appears to have been first made There was a copy of the Chambers translation in the American colonies be- in the West Indies, prior to its manufacture in Woodford by Henry Cook fore the Revolution (Park 13). Fowler 110 (edition of ca. 1780). Vagnetti (identified on page 27). The West Indies connection is interesting; the only EIIIb32. RIBA, Early printed books, no. 923 (Chambers edition of 1726). copy located in America is in the John Carter Brown Library, which is not 4to, cont. full sheep, orig. dark red lettering piece. (xviii)+16+150 pp. with (2)+150 engr surprising - they must have the best collection on the West Indies in the plates. First 2 plates folding. Very good copy. USA. The latest date of the testimonials given at the end is 1786. This title is not in Eileen Harris, BABW, though she does mention Henry Cook and states that according to Bennet Woodcroft’s Subject Matter Index of Patents A RARE PARK LIST TITLE for Inventions (1857) Cook patented “a composition to be used as a substi- tute for lead, slates or tiles in covering churches, houses and all other buildings” 4. FLETCHER, A[BRAHAM]. The Universal Measurer, in three parts. in 1778. She further states that ‘the increased number of newly invented A work equally useful to the Gentleman, Tradesman and Mechanic. Second roofing materials in the last quarter of the eighteenth century may be attrib- edition. London: Printed for G. Robinson & J. Roberts, 1766 uted in great measure to the fire regulations contained in the Building Act of CHARLES WOOD RARE BOOKS First published in Whitehaven in 1752-53. This work went through at least PEPYS DID NOT LIKE THIS BOOK three editions, the latest in 1784. It is listed in the addenda to the Park List (no. 103); a copy was offered by a Philadelphia bookseller in 1773. Park 6. GERBIER, SIR BALTHAZAR. The first and second part of counsel gives only one modern location, the Library Company of Philadelphia. Wallis, and advice to all builders for the choice of their surveyors, clerks of their works, British mathematics, no. 752FLE stating that the author was a mathemati- bricklayers, masons, carpenters, and other workmen therein concerned. As also cian, tobacco-pipe-maker, herbalist, astrologer, and schoolmaster of Little in respect of their works, materials and rates thereof. London: by Tho. Mabb, Boughton. Not in Harris BABW (which is surprising as she devotes chapter for Tho. Heath, 1664 4 to measuring and price books and includes many of them in her bibliogra- phy). Part III of the present work includes a “description, construction, and Originally published 1663. The text of this edition consists of Gerbier’s two use of Coggeshall’s sliding rule.” Also, directions for measuring artificer’s essays, a third issue of A brief discourse concerning the three chief principles of works (bricklaying, chimneys, tiling and slating, plastering, joinery, glazing, magnificent building, viz. solidity, conveniency and ornament, with a separate masonry, etc). OCLC locates six copies of this edition. title with imprint “London: by A. M. for Thomas Heath, 1665”, 44 pp., 8vo, recent full calf spine, antique, by Green Dragon Bindery. viii+240;259+(i) pp with 11 first published 1662 and a reissue of Counsel and advice to all builders, 110 fdg engr. plates. Upper third of the title page has been restored (the word ‘Universal’is pp., but with the title and dedication to the king cancelled and replaced with present in facsimile done expertly by the Green Dragon Bindery on paper of the period). an earlier variant of the Brief discourse title with imprint “London: by Tho. Mabb for Tho. Heath, 1664.” The second part is preceded by an extraordi- nary group of 38 dedicatory epistles ranging from the Duke of York and NOT ON THE PARK LIST - AND IT SHOULD BE Price Rupert to William Wade, an architect/builder. Including as, Samuel THE SOURCE FOR THE FRANKLIN FIREPLACE Pepys put it in his Diary on 28 May 1663 “almost all the men of any great condition in England, so that the epistles are more than the book itself; and 5. GAUGER, [NICOLAS]. Fires improved: or a new method of building both it and them not worth a turd, that I am ashamed that I bought it.” (But chimneys, so as to prevent their smoaking...made English...by J. T. Desaguliers. in fact Pepys apparently admired Gerbier enough to have acquired a major London: J. Senex & E. Curll, 1715 collection of his original drawings; - see E. Chaney, The evolution of the grand tour, ch. 9). The book is not, however without merit; Eileen Harris points Originally published Paris 1713; this the first English edition. Eileen Harris out “his descriptions in Counsel and advice and building materials and their calls this “the earliest treatise on domestic heating and the basis of all eigh- prices are among the earliest published in this country, preceeded only by teenth century books on the subject in English...In the summer of 1715 the those in Thomas Willsford’s little-known Architectonice (1659). Their con- well-known experimental philosopher J. T. Desaguilers published a transla- tribution to English architectural history has been recognized since the tion of Gauger’s book, omitting what he thought superfluous and adding his nineteenth century.” - BABW, p. 207. Harris 254 locating 4 copies (three of own improvements to suit the burning of coal in England.” - BABW, no. which are imperfect). Wing G554. 244. This work was Benjamin Franklin’s self acknowledged source for his 8vo, recent full calf. (ii)+(xii)+44+(48ff of deds)+(viii)+110 pp. Lacks the final ideas on the Pennsylvania fire place. James Logan of Philadelphia had a copy advertisement leaf. Browned throughout. of the Amsterdam edition of 1714 (Wolf. The library of James Logan, 794). But see also RIBA, Early printed books, 1130 which states that “he [Franklin] had almost certainly read in the English translation of 1715...” This title is 7. GIBBS, JAMES. Bibliotheca Radcliviana: or a short description of the not on the Park List (A list of architectural books available in America before the Radcliffe Library at Oxford. London: Printed for the author, 1747 revolution) and it should be. Schimmelman 28. NUC locates 7 copies. 16mo, early 20th century half polished calf.